It’s just a minute or so past 7 a.m. on a Thursday in late August, too early for soccer balls to be flying around Walton Stadium.
Yet they’ve been here for an hour already — redshirt sophomore goalkeeper McKenzie Sauerwein fending off shots from all angles, sophomore Abi Raymer and the rest of the forwards battling defenders in one-on-one drills, junior Alyssa Diggs nursing her bum hamstring with a slow jog around the track — sweating through the time of day most of Columbia spends hitting snooze.
And you thought your 8 a.m. class was rough.
“Freshmen hate it,” coach Brian Blitz said laughing. “But we tell them in the recruiting process, if you’re not a morning person, don’t come.”
“I have never been a morning person,” said freshman midfielder Reagan Russell. “I wake up every morning at 5:15 and lay in my bed thinking, ‘What am I doing?‘ Then I get here and I love it.”
Blitz’s Tigers, having climbed to the NCAA’s No.18 ranking, normally practice for two hours starting at 6 a.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays.
“Once you get through a semester of it, there’s nothing better,” Blitz said. “We’ve asked them, ‘Do you want to change it?’ But once they’re locked in, they like it. It’s been really beneficial all around for us.”
His players share this sentiment. Besides from the initial, natural resentment expected from any college kid being forced to wake up before the sun, multiple Tigers said they preferred early practices for various reasons, including being able to have the rest of the day free and time for school work.
Part of the territory of being a Division I student-athlete is balancing school, sports and social life amidst a hectic schedule. Take the past weekend, when Missouri traveled to Berkeley, Calif., to play then-No.15 California. The Tigers flew out of Columbia Friday, practiced Saturday, spent Sunday in an exhilarating dogfight with the Bears (one that ended in a 3-2 Tiger victory), flew back Monday and were greeted to a lifting session.
That’s where the morning practices come in. With so little time in their schedule to focus on what most college kids only have to focus on, getting practice out of the way early gives Blitz’s players more time to be what he calls “normal college students.”
“If they want to be in the French club, if they are in the J-School — they can be a serious athlete but also a serious student,” he said. “That’s how it came about and caught on.”
Since he implemented early practices nine years ago, the Tigers team GPA has risen from 3.0 to somewhere in the 3.4, 3.5 range, Blitz said.
“You just have to know when to study and when it’s time to get things done. It’s all about time management,” junior midfielder Danielle Nottingham said. “You learn to appreciate naps.”
The change also resulted in unintended perk, allowing the Tigers to beat the heat. Siri predicted it would get up to 99 degrees on this Thursday; when Blitz and Co. finished up at 8 a.m. it was an almost chilly 68.
“I wasn’t that smart,” Blitz said smiling, when asked if he switched things up to stay cool. “It just kind of worked out.”
But perhaps the greatest benefit of practicing early can be seen on Thursdays specifically, when it gives players more time to rest before a regularly scheduled Friday night contest. The workouts are intense — “Hard Knocks, Missouri Soccer,” Russell mocked — but afterward, players get over 30 hours to reboot.
On this particular Thursday, the Tigers are preparing for Arizona State, a fast team with a distinctively finesse-driven style. Soon, the sun will rise and everyone will leave Walton Stadium. The girls who talk fondly of napping will go eat, study and rest up for battle.
“It’ll be a tall test for us,” Blitz said. “It’ll be another war.”
